


WIP Amnesty: I Can Feel Something Inside Me Say (I Know That I Am Strong)

by aimmyarrowshigh



Category: British Singers RPF, Union J (Band), X Factor (UK) RPF
Genre: (respectively), (so 16/18), AU where they're both still the ages they were in 2012 when I wrote it???, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Slow Burn, Teen Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 19:03:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3948166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimmyarrowshigh/pseuds/aimmyarrowshigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coffee shop AU wherein pregnant Ella moves in with her quirky great-aunt and takes it on herself to create an arts scene in her new town, starting with the little coffee shop where a directionless George Shelley works. Started during XF2012 and unfortunately un-worked-on since around XF2013, so here it is as a WIP amnesty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	WIP Amnesty: I Can Feel Something Inside Me Say (I Know That I Am Strong)

**Author's Note:**

> I still love this fic(let) and want to get more into Ella's agency in the plot, so I might come back to this and let Ella be the bamf she is, but it's been two years and I have two Master's Theses to write between now and July 2016, so... yeah. Here it is as a WIP amnesty, if anyone even reads this far. :)

**001.**  
Ella first appears in August, on a day so muggy that the glass of the front window keeps steaming and the air conditioner wedged into the gap above the door is gurgling like low tide. George’s arms are stuck as far into the refrigerator as he can fit them on the pretense of restocking the milk, but his t-shirt sticking to the back of his neck and the way the wisps of his hair are frizzling into a mane belie his intentions. 

So Ella knocks on the countertop lightly with her knuckles, and George hits his head on the bottom of the counter when he jumps, and Ella startles like she’s used to being blamed for things that aren’t her fault.

“Hi,” George says. He’s rubbing the back of his head. “What can I get for you?”

Ella orders an herbal tea and barely meets George’s eyes. He asks, _you sure? Hot out there_ and Ella smiles and says, “My aunt told me the best way to cool down is to drink hot tea.”

So George makes her a spearmint and ginger and admires the waves in her red hair and wonders how he’s never noticed her around town before. She’s wearing a yellow dress with a skirt that looks like it would twist out like a cupcake if she turned in a circle, and George thinks she might be the most refreshing thing he’s seen all day.

 **002.**  
Ella stays, that first afternoon, sitting at a table near the window with the sun casting the dust into glimmering specks all around her. She has a Moleskine notebook and rings on her fingers and she bites at the end of her pen whenever she’s not writing.

George has learned, after years of working in the shop, not to ask writers what they write. If she wants to tell him, she will.

 **003.**  
She stays for hours, until the air conditioner stops coughing and starts hushing steadily, the dimmer heat of evening easier to swallow. The sky is still low and wet, like a second skin, but it feels better with the sun almost gone.

George finishes sweeping the floor and sets the broom back into its cupboard. He should probably have shooed the girl away ages ago so he could count out the cash and lock up for the night, but she didn’t bother him. She’d even bought a fresh tea every three hours to keep her table fairly.

He makes her a last in a travel cup and sets it down on her table. “I have to close up, I’m sorry.”

Ella had jumped, although he didn’t know her as Ella yet, and looked sheepish and apologetic. “ _I’m_ sorry; did I keep you?”

“No,” George lies. “Not at all. And I’m not looking forward to biking home in the heat anyway.” He smiles at her, and it takes a long minute for Ella to smile back. “We open at half-five tomorrow, but – I’ll be in around noon. Just if you wanted more tea.”

“Thanks.” The Moleskine disappears into her bag.

“I’m George.”

Ella hides behind her hair when she introduces herself, but her eyes are bright when she stands up again so George can let her through the locked front door. She almost forgets her tea, but George pushes it into her hand halfway through the door, so their fingers touch. 

**004.**  
Ella doesn’t come back the next day.

 **005.**  
When she does return, it’s two weeks later on into early September and she brings the rain with her, finally breaking through the oppressive heat with a gust of wind enough that she has to fight with the door and it slams behind her, rocking on its hinges.

“You sure know how to make an entrance,” says George. They’ve had more business than usual today with the weather, and the counter is sticky when he sets his elbows on it. “Welcome back, Ella.”

Ella laughs at that, really laughs, and ties her long hair up in a knot. She’s wearing a big a-line mackintosh with black-and-white checks and bright green buttons, and she looks like the cover of an album from half a century ago. “Hello, George, was it? Business alright?”

“Yeah, it’s good.” George gives her a dimpled grin and heads for the mugs. “Tea? Hot chocolate?”

“Mmm, tea again, I think, please,” Ella says. “Herbal, though. The ginger was nice.”

George hums thoughtfully and swipes at the counter with a cloth. “Bit drafty for mint, though. How do you feel about lemon?”

“I feel good about it.” 

George puts out a placating hand as she reaches into her bag for money. “The first cup’s on me, in case you don’t like it.”

Ella smiles at him then and the rain lashes at the windows. Outside, everything looks gray. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s no trouble,” George says, and he wants to make her smile bright again. “I can bring it out to you when it’s done steeping.”

He waits in the wafting cloud of gingerroot and lemon peel and cinnamon and licorice root while Ella finds the same table in the corner, near the window even with the rain, and unbuttons her black and white mac. 

And then he can see.

 **006.**  
She can’t be far along at all, since George hadn’t noticed anything just two weeks ago.

She buys another two herbal teas while she sits all day at the table, writing. George wants to ask a lot more than what she’s filling into her notebook.

 **007.**  
The rain doesn’t calm at all when the day closes. George leans on his broom and stares out the front door – all three feet he can see out onto the street before it’s swallowed up by angry weather – and pretends not to see in the corner of his eye when Ella stands and gives the little round of her belly a rub.

“Did you walk here again?” George asks instead, when she’s started packing her bag.

“It didn’t seem so bad when it was light out. Now I don’t think I could see a hand in front of my face.” Ella sounds chagrined, but gives George a small smile all the same. “I have my mac. And I won’t melt.”

“I could drive you, if you’d like,” George offers.

Ella pauses where she’s beginning to button her coat. “So easy to tell I go riding in cars with strange boys?”

 **008.**  
George goes red and starts to sweep again. The _scritch-shh_ of the broom is loud enough on the wooden floor to be heard over the roll of rain on the window. Up the block, the headlights of a car cut into the window for a turn before disappearing into the dark again. “I didn’t mean it like that. It just is dark and the weather’s bad; I don’t want you to – get run over or catch ill.”

“I’m not your responsibility,” is all Ella can say. “I’m responsible for myself.”

George shrugs at that and walks to the back to hang up his broom and fold his apron. “Alright, if you’d rather walk in the rain. I’d offer for anyone still here so late who was such a good customer, I’ll have you know. Don’t think you’re _so_ special.”

“I don’t think I’m special; I just don’t want your pity.”

“You don’t have it.” George meets her eyes across the bar as he comes back around, slinging his own jacket around his shoulders. “That wasn’t what was in my head at all. I mean, other than for having to walk home in a bloody hurricane. I’d pity anyone that.”

Ella rubs her hand absently over the space where her baby bump is hiding, still small enough to be invisible when she’s wearing her big raincoat; George doesn’t try to pretend like he isn’t watching, this time, because Ella moves like she still can’t quite remember that it’s there, a thing so new to the world. 

“Alright,” she says. “You can drive me home.”

 **009.**  
Music blasts out of the stereo when George turns the car on and it almost rattles the windows.

“Sorry.”

Ella laughs. “Britney Spears, really?”

“I have Beyoncé there, too. They’re good songs to cover. No one expects them from a guy with a guitar.”

“Are you a musician?” Ella asks, and holds her fingers up to the vent spitting out hot air. 

George shakes his head, his tongue poking out from his teeth in concentration, as he pulls the car around the back alley lot. Even in good weather, it’s lousy with gravel and Mr. Abernathy at the butcher’s never pushes his rubbish bin far enough out of the way of the road -- and George has lost his side mirror twice already this year skating past it. “I work in a coffee shop. I’d like to be, though.”

“That’s what I wanted to do,” Ella says. “I was at arts school.”

George nods and clears the end of the alley. He turns out onto the main road, and the pathetic squeak of the windshield wipers losing their battle against the rain is louder than anyone _stronger than yesterday_. “And now you’re here.”

 **010.**  
“And now I’m here.”

 **011.**  
George drops Ella off at a clean, square, blue house and a garden overflowing with giant sunflowers battling the rain with their bedraggled yellow heads barely bowing. There’s a pair of red wellies half-buried in the mud near the white garden fence.

“Well, those won’t do you any good out here,” George says, pointing.

Ella laughs fondly. “Those will be my auntie’s. It’s probably good that I’ve come to stay with her or she’d lose her head. She isn’t my real aunt; she’s just a friend of my grandfather’s. I think she might have been my step-grandmother if he hadn’t died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was nine.” Ella doesn’t wave it off. “He always wanted me to sing.”

“Well, he’d be glad that you’re here.”

“Sure,” Ella says. “As a kid, I liked being here.”

“Maybe we met,” George says, “When you were a kid and visited him. Did you ever know a tubby boy on a red bicycle, probably missing teeth or in a cast?”

“I don’t think so,” Ella laughs. “That’s too meet-cute for me anyway. I don’t think life works like that; you buy me an ice cream when I’m six and make me tea at sixteen. That isn’t real.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s not.” George gives her a smile. “Come back soon?”

Ella tilts her head and nods, her lips pursed a little with a quarter of a smile. “I will, yeah. But for the tea.”

“Of course.”

 **012.**  
She does, this time. She turns up again three days later, fog rolling off her red hair like it has to melt away from her brightness, wearing her big mackintosh again to hide inside. She gives George the ghost of a smile before settling her messenger bag on the corner table near the window, hanging her coat over the back of the wooden chair, and riffling through her handbag for money.

She’s guarded, though, when she orders – doesn’t greet George by name, just gives the perfunctory customer service smile. “Can I have a sweeter tea today, please?”

“Sure,” George says. “How are you today, Ella?”

She looks down, rummaging through her wallet like an encyclopedia. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She doesn’t look at George again all day, even though he stops at her table three times to replenish her sweet plum and almond hibiscus.

She leaves before closing, suddenly disappeared when George looks up to catch his breath after a sudden afternoon rush on biscuits and buns. She’s tucked a bill and a coin beneath her teacup on the table, though, and he pockets them.

 **013.**  
The pattern continues on for a week or two. Ella starts turning up every day, but doesn’t spare George much more than two quid pocket money for all the time she spends there.

He doesn’t really mind. There are plenty of daily regulars, and most of them have never even asked his name (although there are a few with whom he has a more talkative rapport all the same; he’s caught Ella watching with a soft smile as he talks at length to ancient Mrs. Barry and her tiny granddaughter, who come in every day at eleven after morning nursery to get two vanilla biscuits with pink frosting). Ella isn’t any different, even though she’s the only one he thinks is so beautiful. And maybe sad.

 **014.**  
George doesn’t work weekends, so instead he rides his bike up to the public gardens with his guitar slung over his back and sets up camp near the big fountain to play for tips (whether monetary or musical). It’s a Saturday, almost October and really rather chilly outside, when he’s on his way up the pavement and sees them.

Ella’s hair is blowing back in the breeze so that it’s easy for George to see her face, and she looks exhausted. George imagines he’d look exhausted as well if he had a little person inside of him. 

But Ella looks more tired than he’s ever seen her, with bags under her eyes and a grey cast to her face. The woman next to her is little and elderly, chattering away as Ella stares ahead of herself and nods every so often. 

George knows that look. It’s the expression he gets whenever his nan’s going on about keeping a stiff upper lip during the War, or finishing everything on his plate to make up for the years their family had nothing (generations before George was even born). It doesn’t seem like Ella’s great-aunt, though – not _really_ great-aunt, he remembers – is that sort. 

If anything, he thinks, Ella’s grandfather had probably been quite a guy, judging by his lady. She has huge, multicolored enamel rings on every finger and a bright green hat and coat with an orange scarf, and her pantlegs, where they emerge from the flowing coat, are covered in black sequins. Her lipstick is a magenta slash as she talks, but she looks kind around the eyes whenever she looks up at Ella.

They’re both carrying shopping bags, and George can see that they’re coming from the same market in the park he’s headed to: apples and damsons and plums, big leafy heads of lettuce and white bulbs of fennel, radishes and aubergines and long curling courgettes. The bags are bucking at the bottom under the weight of blocks of their goods, and as George watches, skidding to a stop on his bike like he can call out a warning, both of the sacks Ella is carrying break and spill out produce all over the pavement.

He lets his bike rest against the side of a mailbox and reaches the mess before Ella’s even knelt down to start trying to figure out what to do.

“Let me, Ella,” George offers. “Rotten luck.”

“George, you don’t have to,” Ella mutters at the same moment her great-aunt exclaims, “Well, who is your friend?”

Ella sighs and stands back up slowly. A cashier from the bookshop across the road rushes out and sets a few plastic sacks down next to George, who nods his thanks.

“It’s just the barista at the tea shop,” Ella tells her aunt. She shakes her head. “He doesn’t need to help; I can pack back up and we can go home.”

“We’re making ratatouille,” Ella’s great-aunt informs George like it’s a conspiracy, tapping the side of her nose. “Vegetable stew: good for the body, good for the soul.”

George smiles. “That’s really nice. I hope your aubergines didn’t get too bruised.” He puts the last of them besides some ceps in one of the new bags and stands. He hands them to Ella and she takes them, giving him that same little cursory smile before looking away.

“You should come give us a hand, big strong man like you,” Ella’s great-aunt says, and give him an impish smile. “I’m Dora, by the by.”

“Hi, Dora,” George says, blushing. He shakes her free hand. “I don’t think anyone’s called me big and strong unless they were joking.”

“Well, we could split hairs and just say heroic, then, as you’ve saved our vegetables.” Dora winks. 

“Auntie, he’s probably busy,” Ella protests. “He’s clearly going somewhere.”

“Well, he can come over after, can’t he?” Dora says. “I haven’t seen you with a friend since you arrived, and you never ring anyone back home either – ”

George glances at Ella, and immediately he can tell it was a mistake.

“He isn’t my friend,” Ella says sharply. “He just works at the shop. And we don’t need his help.”

 **015.**  
George looks at his feet and kicks the spoke of his bicycle wheel. A leaf skitters past his heel. “Yeah, it’s alright, thanks for the invitation all the same, Dora. I have a – ” he gestures at the guitar still hanging from his back.

“Well, all the same,” Dora says, and he can tell she’s pushing. “You should let him see your songs sometime then, Ella. You could do with making a friend, if he isn’t yet.”

Ella just shakes her head and doesn’t look at George as she hitches the sacks higher into her arms. It makes her coat pull around her middle.

“It’s alright, really, thank you,” George says. He gives Dora a little nod and an encouraging, apologetic smile. He smiles at Ella, too, even though she isn’t looking back and says, “I’ll see you another time if you want some tea, then. Enjoy your bouillabaisse.”

“Ratatouille!” Dora corrects cheerfully as George mounts his bicycle again to continue on to the park. 

**016.**  
(After he’s just begun riding off, he can already hear Dora chastising Ella in a low voice over sending George away so summarily, but he can understand it. Actually, he can’t understand anything about Ella’s life right now, but he knows that’s precisely why she’s pushed him away. And that’s just fine – he doesn’t want to make her look so tired.)

 **017.**  
George’s head is squarely under the pastry case, trying to fish out a lost oat lace cookie, when a voice above him coughs once, delicately, and says, “You are my friend. Sort of.”

George’s hand closes around the dusty biscuit and he stands carefully before slipping it in his pocket. Ella is stood at the other side of the counter, her hair knotted on top of her head, looking down at her hand as she traces the edge of her thumbnail around an old milk scorch. 

“You don’t have to say that,” George says. “You’re a customer; I gave you a lift once because it was raining and I picked up your groceries because it was the polite thing to do. I’m not – I don’t expect anything from you.”

“Yeah, but you’re still nice,” Ella says. “Annoyingly nice. And annoyingly helpful. But annoying as you are, you’re the only person besides my auntie that I’ve talked to in a month.”

George grins a little at that. “I don’t think I’d even need company other than Dora, personally.”

Ella actually laughs. Then she bites her lip and meets George’s eyes for once as she fishes into her satchel and pulls out a square container wrapped in foil. “Ratatouille. It’s good, even cold.”

George’s grin softens into a smile. Their fingers don’t touch as he takes the container. “Thanks. Won’t have to eat stale biscuits off the floor for lunch today now.”

Ella’s nose wrinkles and she looks down at the countertop again to retrace the scorch mark. 

“Did you want some tea?”

Ella nods, and asks for something with orange, so George gives her orange peel and peppermint and red rooibos.

 **018.**  
George sits on the windowsill when he eats the ratatouille for lunch, and Ella glances up three times to smile at him.

“Can’t even taste that they fell on the ground,” he says.

Ella rolls her eyes and looks back down at her notebook, but George can see the ghost of a smile on her mouth, dyed red from her tea.

 **019.**  
George’s tongue tastes like basil and thyme for the rest of the day.

 **020.**  
October sees George up on a stepladder, hanging cotton cobwebs over the door. The bell jangles and then there’s a gust of cold air and Ella says, “Bit inconvenient for customers, don’t you think?”

“You can bear with me for five minutes of inconvenience if it means a month of Halloween joy.” George hops down and moves the ladder anyway, and he gives Ella a bow with a flourish as she comes through the free doorway. She looks -- well, she looks genuinely _pregnant_ now, where before there might have been a question unless she took off her coat. And she still looks tired, her eyes tight around the sides and her cheeks a little gray. Her hair is less sleek, too, all tiny flyaway curls around her forehead.

She rolls her eyes at George. “Isn’t it supposed to be Christmas joy? What's so joyous about massive scuttling hairy things? And besides, I think everyone would rather get in out of the wind if it's all the same to you.”

Ella seems a bit more rushed than she generally is, but not like she needs to be somewhere else, just like she wants to be in and out without a fuss. Or without attracting attention, which makes George sad somehow – ever since she’d mentioned that she went to performing arts school, he’s noticed that she has a presence that seems to demand a stage.

A stage, the coffee shop is not. It’s a nice place – they all keep it tidy and George does try during his shifts to make it look cheery and, yes, festive – but it’s the size of a cupboard and there are burn marks on half of the hard surfaces and they had to throw out the rug back in March because it started moldering from people tracking in wet from outside.

But Ella still always sits in the window.

 **021.**  
Weather’s clear on the weekend in the way that only Octobers can be: sky so blue it looks round, sun blazing white overhead above the flame-orange tree line, cold enough to need a heavy jumper but not so cold as to need gloves. George has his hair stuffed under a knit cap with a bobble as he plays guitar near the fountain in the public garden, the case open at his feet for people to throw in coins (and phone numbers, more often than change).

Electric violet pressed trouser legs come into George’s view and the heavy thump of two pound coins hits the velvet lining of his guitar case.

George looks up from his fingerpicking and grins. “Afternoon, Dora.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Dora’s pink lipstick is immaculate. “Don’t happen to know any ABBA, do you?”

George tilts his head and starts strumming out ‘The Winner Takes It All,’ which just makes Dora look delighted and give him an enthusiastic round of applause. Ella staggers up behind her, arms laden down with paper sacks of vegetables again.

“Y’alright, Ella?” George bobs his head.

“Abandoned with a load of purple potatoes, but I managed.” She smiles a little and holds out one of the bags with her elbow so Dora can take it from her. “Not sure potatoes should be purple, personally.”

George stops playing long enough to adjust the beanie on his head so that his hair frames his face in less of a candyfloss fluff, and he shakes out the shoulders of his leather jacket before wrapping his fingers around the neck of his guitar again. “What are you ladies making tonight?”

“Coconut curry,” says Dora. “Not too spicy.”

“You should come along,” says Ella.

 **022.**  
“And it’s supposed to be purple?” George clarifies, sliding on tiptoe to duck around Ella in Dora’s tiny, lemon-yellow kitchen to take a dark glass bottle of fish sauce down from a shelf over all of their heads. 

“It’s supposed to be purple,” Ella says. She’s peeling purple potatoes into the bin, but shreds keep landing on the bump of her belly instead and she frowns every time, flicking them away. “I’m as nervous about it as you are.”

There’s a clatter as knife hits wooden cutting board where Dora is shredding a head of purple cabbage. “You’re both ninnies, is what you are. Where’s your joie de vivre?”

“French was last week,” Ella says dryly, and George can’t help but to giggle at that because when she isn’t being sad, Ella is being _funny_ and it’s a bit what he’d guessed and yet not what he expected, all at the same time.

“Touché,” Dora agrees, and the cabbage is traded for a purple onion. Next to Ella, George has been charged with toasting the spices on the stove, shaking a pan of flat cumin seeds and tiny pods of coriander and stars of anise over a low flame as they brown and crackle softly and begin to perfume the kitchen. It reminds him a little of watching the coffee roaster turn. “Are you about done, George?”

“I don’t know how to tell, actually.” George giggles sheepishly. “I think so?”

Dora’s hands are surprisingly firm and steady as they land on his shoulders and she peers around his elbow. Next to George, Ella leans over, too, and the side of her arm presses all along the length of George’s, and it’s nothing, but it feels like a start, in Dora’s yellow kitchen that smells of spice.

 **023.**  
By the time there’s a purple paste of spices and cabbage and onion and the tender lavender and white hearts of lemongrass and shiny black-purple alien basil leaves, dark maroon heirloom Czech chilies, and _blueberries_ \-- “Of all things,” Ella whispered dubiously in George’s ear – George sort of wishes that he lived here, too, because it’s dark outside so early in the day this time of year but it’s bright and warm inside and when Ella isn’t cagey and nervous, she’s even more beautiful than he’d thought she was. Even with a smudge of oil on her cheek. Even with a ridiculous checkerprint apron and a ratty Minnie Mouse sweatshirt over the top of her striped dress.

The purple potatoes and aubergine end up in the pan, too, sizzling quietly; George flicks a few grains of black rice at Ella when Dora’s not looking. George doesn’t feel particularly useful while Ella’s stirring the curry and Dora is kneading elastic dough for naan, so when a song he likes comes on the radio, he sidles around Ella and takes out his guitar. His socked toes curl on the floor as he tunes the strings.

The song fades into another – rocking bass, big rap – but George twists it and strums along, his own quiet voice popping along to _predict an earthquake up in here_. Ella actually straightens up and looks over her shoulder, one lock of hair straggling down over the nape of her neck where it’s fallen out of her topknot, and she stops stirring as she says, “You’re actually good.”

George smirks. “Don’t sound _so_ surprised.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Ella actually smiles, flicks a grain of rice back at George, and tends to her stirring again. She adds the cubes of purple potato to her bubbling curry. “I didn’t actually think I liked this song.”

George misses a few words as he looked down at his own fingers on the strings. Outside, the streetlights switch on and pool light in patches all down the road.

Guitar, the crackle of the radio, Dora’s softly padding feet across the floor. Dough, pale and shining with oil, resting on the countertop. Ella hums softly as lamb hits the hot pan, sizzling. The wood of the table creaks as George thumps his knee to keep time. Blueberries whir through the food processor and hit the curry with a shush, acid and sweet and dark dye on the meat marinated in spices. 

When that Florence Welch cover of an old Candy Stratton song comes on, though, Ella opens her mouth and finally _sings_. Really sings, like George has almost never heard anyone do in real life, and it bundles up in his chest like rags that _oh_ , she’s a _real_ singer. Or she was. She still could be, if she wants, he thinks, with a voice like that.

 **024.**  
She’s resting her hand on her belly while she belts out the notes, but she’s dancing with her other arm and little shimmies of her hips like she thinks no one will notice under the apron. 

Dora gives George a knowing little smile over the rounds of dough headed for the broiler. Shaking his head, George laughs under his breath because it’s the only thing he can do – if he’d ever thought he could sing well enough to make it, it’s because he hadn’t heard Ella yet.

 **025.**  
It doesn’t even taste purple at all. 

“When I look at it, I expect it to be different,” Ella remarks, poking at a shred of meat with the end of her fork. “But it’s good.”

Dora sops up some lavender-gray coconut milk and diced aubergine with a torn piece of naan; she pops it in her mouth and swallows before giving Ella a tap to the side of her nose and a grin. “Isn’t that how it always goes?”

 **026.**  
The next day, George stays home and putters around his flat with his hair a rumpled mess and his t-shirt half-tucked into the waist of his pants because there’s no reason to bother, really, on a Sunday. Four games of Mario Kart into the afternoon, his flatmate, Josh, pokes his head into the living room and asks, “What’s in the Tupperware?”

George overtakes a corner and dodges a koopa shell. “Curry.”

“How old is it?” Josh sounds like he’s found a bomb. “It’s gone off.”

“No, it hasn’t; it’s just purple,” George mumbles. He pauses the game and scratches his belly, yawning. “Don’t eat it. ‘S mine.”

“I don’t want someone else’s half-eaten food,” Josh assures him. “It’s weird.”

 **027.**  
For some reason, it bothers George more than it probably should.

 **028.**  
Josh comes into the shop the next day while Ella is there, seated at her table in the window, writing in her notebook. The boys in his band, Jaymi and JJ, jostle their way through the door with him, Jaymi’s boyfriend Olly trailing behind them with Jaymi’s piano case bumping on his back.

(They always ask George to play with him, but like – Jaymi and Josh have real experience with professional music, and they knew JJ before they knew him, so he always feels a bit silly. Ella has real experience with music, too; they might like each other, he thinks. He doesn’t want to mention it yet.)

“Georgie Porgie, make me a caramel slice sandwich,” Josh says imperiously, jumping up to sit on the countertop. George has told him a hundred times not to do that. “I’m horribly depressed.”

“Why?” George asks. “And that’s a quid.”

“Not for me,” Josh replies. He rummages in his pockets and flips George 10p. “If you do a good job, I’ll up you another five p.”

“Generous,” George says drily, but he takes JJ, Jaymi, and Olly’s orders all the same and heads to the pastry case to start sandwiching two caramel slices together with chocolate icing for Josh. “Why are you depressed, now?”

“City ’s closing,” JJ explains. “We’ll have nowhere to do gigs.”

“Well, they’re not really _gigs_ ,” Jaymi corrects. “Just the odd open set on weekends. But it’s still a blow.”

George nods, plating the chocolate-caramel-and-shortbread monstrosity and handing it to Josh before sliding behind the espresso machine. City Diner had been open for ages and had horrible, sticky linoleum floors and a half-raised bandstand at the back that let local groups rotate in and out of to get exposure. No one had yet been exposed to someone who really _mattered_ and could get them out of down, but old Mr. Crawford had made a killing selling his home-pressed CDs of fiddling basics after playing on Easter. The three J’s liked to play there on Saturdays from dinner service through the midnight crowd.

George had vaguely entertained the idea of moving his weekend guitar picking there over the winter, but apparently it would be impossible.

Not a real loss.

“It just sucks,” Josh moans. “There’s nowhere in this town to play music. There’s nowhere to even _hear_ it.”

There’s chocolate all over the side of his mouth. George hands cappuccinos to JJ and Jaymi. He doesn’t mean to glance up at Ella over the top of the red-lacquered machine, but he does, and she quickly looks back down, pretending not to be eavesdropping on their conversation.

She glances up a second later, and George is still looking. He winks.

 **029.**  
Later, long after his boys have left and so have most of the customers, George is sweeping up near Ella’s table and she says, “So why aren’t you in the band?”

George leans on his broom. “Dunno, really. I’m just not. My guitar gets jealous if there are other instruments about. You know how it is.”

“Not sure I do, actually, you loony,” Ella laughs. She turns her teacup around on its saucer. “What’s that they’ve closed?”

“Just a diner,” George explains. “A shitty one, if I’m honest, but they let local bands come in and play a lot. They didn’t pay, but they would give you free food, although Josh learnt pretty quickly not to eat the Scotch eggs.”

“Ew.” 

“It wasn’t pretty,” George agrees. “But it still took three times before he decided it wasn’t a fluke.”

Ella laughs again at that. “Well, someone should find a venue with a clean bill of health for him, then.”

“I don’t think places without salmonella let us little folk play,” George says, and when Ella’s eyes dim, he wishes he could swallow the words.

“Maybe not,” she agrees quietly, and the teacup gets another quarter-turn. Then she brightens. “I’m never old enough to sing anywhere the health department would sign off on. It’s like they don’t understand all age people like music.”

“It’s true,” George says. “My little brother, Leo, he’s two, and he goes crazy for like advert jingles even.”

Ella smiles softly at that, and her hand floats to her belly. George wants to ask, _does it like music? Can you tell?_ but he thinks, no, that isn’t any of his. 

It doesn’t bother him as much as it might, but it reminds him of the dirty curry dish in his sink back at home and that, that bothers him. 

**030.**  
That night at home, George drops down on the sofa beside Josh and asks, “Are you still depressed?” and Josh says, “Will be ‘til I’m famous. Might give up and go on X Factor, sell out to Simon Cowell. C’mon, take my mind off it, let me hand you your ass at Halo.”

After two hours and two beers each, George asks, curiously, “When did you start singing, again?”

“Dunno,” Josh grunts. “Always, I guess. On your right.”

“Dammit!” George curses as he loses another life. After he’s recharged and catches up to Josh again, he asks, “D’you wanna jam this weekend?”

“Yeah, well, got nowhere else to play, have I?” Josh asks glumly. He pauses the game and throws down his controller. “Now I’m depressed again. Go make me an ice cream sundae.”

“I’m not at work; make your own.”

Josh sighs heavily. “But you make them better. Please?”

George shakes his head and stands up, hitching up the waist of his sweatpants where they’ve slipped down below his ass while he was slouching. “You are honestly the neediest person I know, including Archie and Spencer.”

“I’m appealing to your instincts!” Josh yells from where he’s still sprawled face-down on the sofa. “It’s like that experiment with Pavlova and the dog. I’m gonna start introducing tones soon, and when you hear them, you’ll make me sweets.”

“Doesn’t work like that,” George calls back. He puts the chocolate sauce in the microwave.

“Sure it does. Here, we’ll try one.” Josh lets out a wail.

George giggles. “You’re just crying! You are literally a giant baby.”

He carries the sundae for Josh and a cup of coffee with chocolate syrup for himself back into the living room and sets them down on the scrap-littered table. Josh swings his legs around and takes the bowl.

“It’s a good thing you have a million siblings,” Josh says around a mouthful of ice cream. He mutters about brainfreeze and frantically pants around his tongue for a minute, and then says, “You already know how to deal with babies. That’s useful.”

 **031.**  
They end up drinking another six-pack of beer each and finishing off both the ice cream and chocolate sauce. George wakes up with a hangover, and spends the morning puking before going to work.

 **032.**  
Ella’s eyebrows are pinched when George looks over at her from the espresso machine, a hangdog look on his face and a puff of hair at the back that won’t go down.

“Morning sickness?” 

“Something like that,” he mutters. His lips purse. “Sorry.”

“My joke wasn’t so bad that _you_ have to apologize for it,” Ella says lightly. “Now buck up and make me a tea. It’s not morning anymore.”

George glowers at her, because she is ungrateful and pretty and terrible, and makes her a ginger-lemon-honey tisane that smells like it might be a good idea for his own gut, too.

**[AND THEN STUFF. STUFF LIKE ELLA SPEARHEADING A CAMPAIGN TO TURN THE COFFEE SHOP INTO AN ARTSPACE WITH OPEN MIC NIGHTS AND GALLERY OPENINGS. ALSO MORE GELLA COOKING ADVENTURES, BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY WAY I KNOW HOW TO WRITE BONDING. EVENTUAL LOVE. A CUTE BABY THAT LIKES TO GRAB FLUFFY HAIR. THAT KINDA STUFF. The usual.]**


End file.
